11
October 2004
2. "Turkish Prime Minister slanders international human rights organizations", according to Turkey, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, etc are related to terrorist organisations.
3. "One Turkish soldier killed, three wounded in landmine blast", one Turkish soldier was killed and three wounded when their vehicle drove over a landmine, believed to have been placed by Kurdish militants in the southeast of the country, the local governor said.
4. "Sezer dismisses 'minorities' in Turkey", Gul says the EU has shown understanding by taking out references to Kurdish and Alawite 'minorities,' calling the description unacceptable
5. "Kurds see bright future in EU", the BBC’s Stephen Sackur reports from the mainly Kurdish town of Siirt in eastern Turkey, as the European Union warms to Ankara’s membership bid.
6. "Turkish military takes backseat, for now", equally vigilant is the European Commission, the EU's governing body, which, in a report Wednesday analyzing Turkey's recent reforms, cautioned: "Although the process of aligning civil-military relations with EU practice is under way, the armed forces in Turkey continue to exercise influence through a series of informal channels."
1. - Turkish Daily News - "Human rights association
criticizes Erdogan’s attitude on torture":
Erdogan’s zero tolerance against torture policy runs counter
to his attitude towards human rights supporters, say presidents of the
top two human rights associations in the country.
ANKARA / 9 Oktober 2004
Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (TIHV) President Yavuz Onen and Human Rights Association (IHD) President Husnu Ondul released a statement on Friday, alleging that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had said that people working for human rights associations had links to terrorist organizations and had called for investigations initiated into their affairs.
Onen and Ondul noted that both the IHD and TIHV described the torture in Turkey as systematic in accordance with the guidelines set by the United Nations, adding that the government’s responsibility in such crimes was to assess and investigate in a timely manner.
They said that Erdogan’s conduct against human rights organizations ran counter to his recent speech at the European Council, when the prime minister had said that they had zero tolerance for torture.
They said that Erdogan’s statement made against human
rights supporters were unfortunate, noting that they still remembered
the murders of the human rights supporters that happened in the 1990s.
2. - info-turk - "Turkish Prime Minister slanders international human rights organizations":
According to Turkey, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, etc are related to terrorist organisations!
October 2004 / issue No. 304
On October 6, 2004 in Strasbourg, answering questions of members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said, "those who affirm that there is still ideologically motivated torture in Turkey are people who were linked to terrorist organizations."
Erdogan repeated the same claim at a press conference held the same day at the Council of Europe building and broadcasted directly by the Turkish State's televsion TRT.
When a journalist asked him his stand concerning the accusations of torture carried against Turkey, he answered that these charges are unfounded, there were no systematic tortures in Turkey, and that the European Commission itself underlined it. He declared once more that the reports concerning torture are the work of those people who are in relations with terrorist organizations"!
Reacting against this slanderous attack, the People's House of Geneva immediately published a press release relating to the fact of tortures and violations of human rights in Turkey.
According to this communiqué, the following NGOs are accused by Erdogan of being in relations with terrorist organizations, because they insist that torture still threatens the political opponents in Turkey:
Amnesty International
Human Rights Watch
International federation of Human Rights (FIDH)
Reporters without frontiers
Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (TIHV)
Human Rights Association of Turkey (IHD)
Mazlum-Der (Organization for defending human rights et solidarity with
oppressed people)
Various bar associations of Turkey
International PEN
World Organization against Torture
Center Europe - Third World
Later on, the People's House of Geneva underlines the following facts:
"The latest figures concerning the cases of torture in Turkey are eloquent: For the first six months of 2004, it is not less than 692 cases which were denounced. In 2003, 562 cases had been raised, out and within the centers of detention. According to associations defending humans rights, tortures with electricity and blows were the principal means used.
"Just after the publication, in the media, of Mr. Verheugen's declarations claiming that "there is no more systematic torture in Turkey", the principal organizations of human rights - TIHV, IHD and the Diyarbakir Bar Association- wrote to the European Commissioner for Enlargement. They forwarded to him towards September 25 a file containing concrete proofs of torture (medical certificates, photographs, declarations, etc).
So, many questions arise:
- Mr. Verheugen, don't you consider 692 registered
cases of torture as systematic?
- Why the reports and the work of tens of human rights organizations
do not weigh vis-à-vis with the political and economic interests
of the European countries?
- About 10.000 political prisoners still suffer in the Turkish jails:
Why you don't demand their release?
- Between 3 and 4 million Kurds have been displaced; the right to express
freely its culture is always denied; millions of human beings always
wait to be able to re-enter their homesŠ How can you say that the
situation of these people improves?
- Where are, in this case, the values of the European Union, democracy
and human rights?
The Turkish Prime Minister's declaration is a new maneuver of propaganda, aiming at assimilating the defenders of the human rights to people acting against the interests of Turkey. Once more, the government uses slandering against the opponents of its policy. It is unacceptable. (http://www.assmp.org)
HRW: EU Human Rights Criteria Not Met on Torture and Displaced People
Today's recommendation by the European Commission that Turkey should begin negotiations for EU membership in 2005 is a positive step forward, but additional reform measures are needed before the European Council can credibly support a positive decision on Turkey's membership, Human Rights Watch said today.
The Commission's decision today recognizes the important steps Turkey has already taken to improve its human rights record and should encourage the government to make further reforms before December. The Commission's decision is based on the 2004 Regular Report on Turkey's Progress Toward European Union Membership. Human Rights Watch stressed that, for the EU's membership criteria to be credibly fulfilled, the Turkish government must take a number of additional measures, most importantly to combat torture and to facilitate the return of the hundreds of thousands of villagers who were displaced during the 15-year armed conflict in southeast Turkey.
"The European Union cannot accept mere promises that it will implement safeguards for detainees," said Jonathan Sugden, researcher for Human Rights Watch's Europe and Central Asia division. "Police stations need to be supervised by independent monitors. Otherwise, we may again see an increase in reports of ill-treatment or even deaths in custody."
As for the internally displaced, Sugden stressed that "the Turkish government has so far failed to take any significant action to address the concerns of the displaced or facilitate their return to their former homes. Now is the time for the government to commit to a credible returns process that includes a specific role for the U.N. and other international agencies."
The EU's Regular Report recognizes Turkey's progress in respect for human and minority rights, but also identifies a number of human rights criteria that the Turkish government has not yet fulfilled. The report notes that Turkey abolished the death penalty for all offences and in all circumstances, including wartime, in January 2004. It also describes the abolition of some criminal code provisions under which journalists and politicians were prosecuted for their peaceful speech, and notes that judges are increasingly using the European Convention on Human Rights as a basis to acquit writers for statements that would certainly have landed them in prison just a few years ago. However, the Commission also stresses that journalists are still threatened with imprisonment. Similarly, the Commission acknowledges that the legal protections against ill-treatment and torture in police custody are now among the best in Europe, but emphasizes that these are sometimes neglected in practice. Finally, it recognizes that broadcasting in minority languages, including Kurdish, began in June 2004. While the Regular Report indicates that this is "only a starting point," it also recognizes that it represents an historic change for Turkey.
Despite these important reforms, however, the Turkish government has failed to take strong and effective measures to implement safeguards against torture and ill-treatment, or to support the return of the hundreds of thousands of Kurds displaced during the conflict with the Kurdish Workers' Party (now known as Kongra Gel) during the 1990s. Human Rights Watch considers the Turkish government's poor response in these areas unacceptable at this late stage in the EU accession process and is particularly concerned that the Regular Report's recommendations are not sufficiently strong on either issue. The Commission and the Council must insist that these gaps are filled before Turkey's membership process advances to the next stage.
The period from October to December 17, 2004, when the European Commission will determine whether Turkey gets a firm date to begin membership negotiations, provides an important opportunity for the EU to insist on specific steps to address these remaining areas of concern. Human Rights Watch calls on the European Commission to use this period of maximum leverage to ensure that Turkey commits to a concrete plan of action to guarantee the return of internally displaced Kurds to their homes in dignity and safety, and introduces sound supervision systems for police stations and gendarmeries throughout the country. The best chance for achieving these remaining reforms is through the leverage provided by the EU accession process. The EU should not squander this important opportunity to encourage long-lasting and thorough human rights reform.
Human Rights Watch notes that the European Council is expected to strengthen its mechanisms for monitoring human rights progress in Turkey and other candidate countries as they enter membership negotiations, and welcomes a more thorough and comprehensive human rights monitoring process for all candidate countries to better ensure that progress will be sustained once membership negotiations are underway.
"The Turkish government has made significant progress
in many areas of human rights protection, but its reform process will
not have credibility until the government opens police stations to independent
outside monitors and establishes a partnership with the international
community for the return of the displaced," said Sugden. "If,
and only if, they can fill these gaps by December then a positive decision
by the European Council will be fully justified." (HRW, October
6, 2004)
3. - AFP - "One Turkish soldier killed, three
wounded in landmine blast":
ANKARA / 9 October 2004
One Turkish soldier was killed and three wounded when their vehicle drove over a landmine, believed to have been placed by Kurdish militants in the southeast of the country, the local governor said.
Members of the former Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) were suspected of having planted the device on the route used by the soldiers returning from a patrol, Anatolia news agency quoted governor Haluk Imga as saying.
The former PKK -- now renamed Kongra-Gel -- last June ended a five year-old truce in its campaign to achieve an independent Kurdish state in the area of what is now southeastern Turkey.
The group called the truce after the 1999 arrest of their leader, Abdullah Ocalan, currently serving life in a Turkish jail.
Violence, which had practically ceased in the predominantly Kurdish southeast, has since recurred sporadically.
Hostilities between the PKK and Turkish security forces
claimed some 37,000 lives between 1984 and 1999.
4. - Turkish Daily News - "Sezer dismisses 'minorities' in Turkey":
Gul says the EU has shown understanding by taking out references to Kurdish and Alawite 'minorities,' calling the description unacceptable
ANKARA / 9 October 2004
President Ahmet Necdet Sezer dismissed yesterday that Kurds and Alawites constituted a minority in Turkey, saying they were part of the "majority" in the country.
"Why should we call a part of the majority a minority?" asked the president, in response to question requesting comment on the European Union Commission's reference to minority rights in a progress report on Turkey's reform efforts.
The commission recommended in its report beginning of long-delayed accession talks. EU leaders will decide on whether or not to begin the talks at a December summit.
Turkey has passed reforms allowing courses to open to teach Kurdish and state braodcaster TRT has launched Kurdish broadcasting in line with laws passed to that effect.
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said the EU report did not refer to minorities.
"All of such references have been taken out in the final version (of the report)," he told reporters.
"Everybody knows that Turkey can never accept that. Europeans know it very well."
The Lausanne Treaty of 1923, the founding agreement of the Turkish Republic, stipulates that description of "minority" could be applied to non-Muslim citizens only.
"That was a mistake. That would not be welcomed by
our own citizens. There are issues that Turkey can never accept and
such descriptions are one of them," Gul said, adding that the EU
showed understanding by agreeing to take out references to "minorities."
5. - BBC - "Kurds see bright future in EU":
The BBC’s Stephen Sackur reports from the mainly Kurdish town of Siirt in eastern Turkey, as the European Union warms to Ankara’s membership bid.
SIIRT / 9 October 2004 / by Stephen Sackur
Siirt is about 4,020km (2,500 miles) from Brussels, and a short hop from Iran and Iraq. Yet today the people here - mostly Kurds - believe they are on the way to becoming EU citizens.
A decade ago, Siirt was caught up in a dirty war between Kurdish guerrillas and the Turkish army.
A lot has changed since then. This place is more peaceful and more prosperous.
If you scratch the surface of this town you soon come up against problems which the EU is going to have to address.
I visited a lawyer’s office in Siirt. A client, Hussein Gundogdu, is overwhelmed with worry over his brother, who has been held without charge by Turkish police since August.
Torture allegations
"They took hold of his genitals and squeezed them and then let them go so as not to bruise the area," says Mr Gundogdu, who has recently been allowed to see his brother.
"When we tried to report it to the prison doctor he said there was nothing to see," Mr Gundogdu adds.
Abdullah Gundogdu is being held in Siirt’s sprawling prison. We asked the police for an interview, but they declined.
Human rights activists claim there are 300 political prisoners still in the prison.
"There are some changes for the better, but they are confined to Ankara," Abdulhekim Gider, one of the activists, says.
"I see many victims of torture today as before. But the authorities continue to protect the police from prosecution."
Empty villages
Head east and you head to a former stronghold of the Kurdish guerrillas, the PKK.
In recent months sporadic violence has returned. Army checkpoints now restrict access. We were politely turned back.
A soldier said they could not let us go on because it
was too dangerous.
Empty villages are evidence of the brutal conflict here a decade ago.
Turkey promised the EU it would let Kurdish villagers back, but the process has hardly begun.
’No way back’
In Siirt’s town hall there was a new sense of optimism. The mayor welcomed a German consultant, who was using European money to lay new sewers.
"I would say there is no way back. It is very difficult to imagine any alternative to Turkey becoming a fully European state even if it might take some years still," said the consultant, Christoph Sommer.
Outside Siirt, Kurds were picking cotton - even children, working for just pennies.
They hope that the EU will eventually deliver them a brighter
future.
6. - The Washington Times - "Turkish military takes backseat, for now":
KYRENIA / 10 October 2004 / by Andrew Borowiec
At the bark of a command, the ranks of soldiers with closely cropped hair froze. Then, as one man, they roared: "Bir Turk dunyaya bedel dir!" -- "One Turk is worth the whole world!"
The sun was rising over the ruins of the 13th-century Bellapais Abbey and the olive groves stretching toward the sandy beaches. It was there, in the gentle Mediterranean summer mist, that an armada of 22 Turkish warships appeared on July 20, 1974, to seize a strip of Cyprus and create a home for the island's Turkish-Cypriot minority.
Today the Greek-Cypriot part of this eastern Mediterranean island is in the European Union. The Turkish-Cypriots, however, are still isolated in their tiny state and the Turkish army is still here, protecting Turkey's southern outpost -- the unexpected windfall of the bungled Greek coup to unite the island with Greece.
According to Gen. Hilmi Ozkok, chief of the Turkish General Staff, the Turkish military presence in Cyprus -- some 30,000 troops -- is "crucial," and losing its base here would mean "Turkey is encircled."
He added that, if the part of the island calling itself "the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus" became an internationally recognized independent state, it would "affect territorial waters, economic zones and the freedom of movement of Turkish troops."
It was one of the most recent political signals from the Turkish military establishment, which the late Turkish President Turgut Ozal once described to The Washington Times as "the most respected force in the nation."
The approaching start of Turkey's European Union membership negotiations has silenced the Turkish military and forced it to cede ground to politicians. The military has bowed to EU requirements, but remains vigilant.
Equally vigilant is the European Commission, the EU's governing body, which, in a report Wednesday analyzing Turkey's recent reforms, cautioned: "Although the process of aligning civil-military relations with EU practice is under way, the armed forces in Turkey continue to exercise influence through a series of informal channels."
Opinions vary on how "informal" these channels are, and to what extent the cadres of the conscript army of half a million -- the second largest of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) -- have been sidestepped by the government in its effort to be accepted by Europe's "Christian Club."
Efforts to silence the military are not new, although the last overt act of the armed forces was to force the ouster of the pro-Islamic government of Necmettin Erbakan in 1997. The army avoided sending tanks into the streets during what was subsequently dubbed "a soft coup," and says that it acted in its role as the "guardian" of the secular system introduced more than 80 years ago by Mustafa Kemal, later called Ataturk -- "Father of the Turks" -- who founded the republic on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.
Ataturk, today the leading Turkish national hero, was no sissy and neither were his soldiers.
As a military commander during an August 1915 attack against the Australia-New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) to stop the Allied drive for control of the Dardanelles, Col. Kemal ordered a bayonets-only attack and told the troops: "I am not ordering you to attack, I am ordering you to die." One of the regiments fought to the last man, also killing a British brigade commander.
More than 33,000 Allied soldiers and 86,000 Turkish troops died in the eight-month Gallipoli campaign, but Turkey was saved.
The spirit of "do or die" has since remained in the Turkish army, which suffered high casualties as part of the United Nations force during the Korean War. Turkish military leaders consider it their duty to protect what has become known as "Kemalism" and make sure that politicians don't ruin Ataturk's republican heritage.
No analyst underestimates the power and influence of the Turkish military, which Giles Merritt, director of Forum Europe, described as the "thorniest aspect" of Turkey's bid to join the European Union.
"The power and status of the army is a striking feature of life in Turkey," he said, adding that the nature of the army's relations with the government and parliament "is unthinkable in European terms," because Europeans "want a system in which parliaments and not generals decide on defense budgets."
Turkish pundits generally see the army as more than just a military force. To Mehmet Ali Kislale, "in Turkey the army is more than a branch of state. It is a unifying and to some extent a civilizing force."
Observed British historian David Hotham: "The army takes peasants from remote villages, feeds them, clothes them, teaches them to read and write, brings them to the cities."
Mehmet Ali Birand, a respected Turkish commentator, sees the army as an integral part of the Turkish system, but "a kind of nongovernmental organization -- an interest group with heavy weapons."
As Turkey prepares for what may be a long and arduous negotiations with the European Union, the highly motivated albeit underpaid military cadres are torn by conflicting feelings.
Turkish political scientists say that, on the one hand, the army believes that joining the European Union would be in keeping with the legacy of Ataturk, who saw Europe as Turkey's ultimate goal. On the other hand, the generals are bitterly aware of widespread European opposition to admitting a Muslim nation of 70 million with a galloping birth rate soon likely to dwarf even such populous countries as Germany.
A recent opinion poll shows 56 percent of French respondents opposed to Turkey's EU membership, which the French government wants to submit to a referendum likely to capsize the Turkish application.
Underlying the military's frustration with the recent clipping of its political wings is its uneasy relationship with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose Justice and Development Party (AKP) has Islamic roots of the sort that prompted the 1997 "soft coup" by the generals.
Gen. Ozkok, a soft-spoken, bespectacled leader of the military establishment, has often told his officers he fears the government is using EU requirements to undermine the army's traditional role. Still, he has ordered senior officers to remain silent while the government copes with the increasingly controversial EU problem.
According to one Western diplomatic assessment, as far as Turkey's military establishment is concerned, the Erdogan Cabinet "is the worst government that could be in power at this time."
Turkish generals, the report said, regard the European Union as naive in its views of Turkey's suppression of the Kurdish revolt and feel Europeans underestimate the "Islamic connection" of Mr. Erdogan's AKP.
This year saw the army, under political pressure, relinquish control of the all-important National Security Council (MGK) established following the 1960 military coup, and then, after the 1980 coup, turned by the military into a "command center" supervising the government.
The MGK still meets regularly but in an increasingly tense atmosphere, its civilian members on one side of a massive, highly polished table and the bemedalled generals on the other.
Turkish sources say Gen. Ozkok has issued instructions to senior commanders that in view of Turkey's EU ambition they should abstain from making public political comments.
One recent report claimed that with the prospect of EU membership negotiations, the MGK has become a purely advisory body. Its meetings are less frequent -- apparently once every two months -- thus reducing its role in political decisions.
Also, and this appears to be crucial, the nonclassified aspects of the defense budget are now submitted to civilian scrutiny.
Few analysts have ever accused the Turkish military of craving power. After every one of its three major coups between 1960 and 1980, the army returned to barracks, leaving the chastened politicians in charge of running the country.
Until now, the army had its way in a number of cases:
• It has held on to its conquest of northern Cyprus regardless
of its political implications.
• It ousted the pro-Islamic government in 1997.
• It brought the Kurdish revolt under control.
• It pushed through a defense treaty with Israel that still troubles
Arab capitals.
The military takeover of Sept. 12, 1980, lasted three years. It is regarded by the generals and a number of Turks as a salutary operation that saved Turkey from civil war.
The army watched with alarm as 2,200 people died in sectarian violence during 1979. On the eve of the military coup, the death rate averaged 30 a day. Security services identified 47 underground groups.
Politicians hurled insults at each other while 1,275 bills awaited parliamentary action. In the city of Konya, some 40,000 demonstrators clamored for an Islamic state.
After the seizure of some 86,000 weapons, mass arrests, trials and "political cleansing" -- as a result of which some prominent politicians were banned from public office -- the army marched back to its barracks.
But all Turks remain aware of its watchful presence.